


The Hunt

by chariot_vii



Category: Neolithic Bear Cult
Genre: Bears, Human Sacrifice, neolithic, prehistory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 16:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17104337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chariot_vii/pseuds/chariot_vii
Summary: You are a shaman on the night of a sacrifice.





	The Hunt

It is night-time and the full moon shines brightly upon the grove. You and your tribes-people sit on small wooden stumps in a circle surrounding a boulder with a man tied to it. He is naked and asleep. You all hold deerskin drums. You reach for your headdress, a deer skull cap with broken antlers and two eye holes drilled into the cranium. Your motion signals the others to lightly tap their drums with their finger tips asynchronously. The sacrifice stirs from his drug-induced sleep. He makes no noise; he is still high and unsure of his surroundings. He does not notice he has been bound.

His awakening prompts you to begin effortlessly orating the tale of the First Hunt, an old song once sung to you by your mother on the nights you could not sleep. Some older tribes-people join in quietly through habit. You tell the tale of how people rose from the mud of the lowlands and were scared into the forest by the powerful gods of the plains. When they reached the forest it was filled with cratures; but because they were starving, the ancient ones begged the forest animals to let humans eat them, and in return humans would immortalize the beasts' names and worship them for all eternity. The animals and humans met in an open grove at a stone, and after much bickering, the forest animals allowed the humans to speak their names and hunt them in return for eternal worship. And so the humans could hunt Fish, Bird, Snake, Deer, and Boar, and they were immortalized as gods of the forest. But there was one animal not present in this agreement, the most feared beast, The Honey-Eater, The Destroyer; she did not allow humans to speak her name. She would kill those who dared to hunt her, and the families of them, too. She demanded godship through fear.

You continue to tell the story. It feels comfortable and easy in your mouth and your mind immerses itself in the sound of the drumming. As you get near the end, the drums crescendo slowly. Louder, louder, louder. The the syllables of the beats and the ancient story reach a polyphonic climax, weaving in and out, chaotically overlapping and accenting each other. This is your cue. You unsheathe your ceremonial knife from your hip; its pommel is fashioned into the profile of The Honey-Eater, The Destroyer. You dare not even think her true name. You walk up to your sacrifice who stirs lightly in his bonds now, except for his eyes, which nervously and intently follow the reflection on the edge of the flint blade. He, like you with your mask, cannot see well in the dark, but the moonlight reveals just enough. You can tell he is still disoriented by the music. So are you.

Your sacrifice lays horizontally before you and squirms. You take two fingers and wet them with your tongue and dip them in to the satchel of red ochre dye at your hip, and you pull out a thick cake maroon powder, red like blood, like blood of birth, like blood of death. The red ochre reminds you of the dirt your ancestors crawled out from, of the blood of the few births you have been blessed to witness, of the hunting accidents you have been ashamed you could not stop. You pray to the forest for no further deaths. Your sacrifice shakes as the poison finally wears off. You place your fingers on his bare chest. The drums are blazing. Your ears are ringing from the shouts. You’re dragging your fingers in a concentric circle across his breast. Its center is landing on the heart. You’re drunk with adrenaline. You don’t know what is happening. You’re raising your knife and taking a deep breath and you plunge it into the ochre spiral and the body jolts and you’re feeling something wet and warm drip onto your feet. Your mind clears as the voices and the drums drift off. You step back and take off your mask, and the light of the moon reflects the sacrifice’s blood dipping down the sides of the stone. A young boy scurries next to your feet and feels around for blood dampened earth -- he places a pot with sweet honey there. The child is humming the ancient song. The grove hums quietly along with him.


End file.
